Right Wing Watch reports that “on a conference call for Rick Scarborough’s Vision America, Bishop E.W. Jackson” of contentiously named STAND (Staying True to America’s National Destiny) America PAC, “claimed that the Democratic Party ‘embraces this anti-Christian, anti-God’ worldview.”
RWW goes on to say that Bishop Jackson asserted that the Democratic Party is “nothing less than a party of dependence, [and] in effect created a new form of slavery on a liberal plantation that it wants to keep black people on.”
Hmm. Must be why most black folks vote Democrat. And it’s been that way for years. In fact, in 2008, a record 96 percent of blacks voted for Barack Obama.
Yet Bishop Jackson is not the first to claim that Democrats enslave blacks. It is an argument that rages in the black community and it’s a common claim coming from the right. Blatantly racist conservative blog Obambi.com posted in January that “Democrats have ENSLAVED blacks for over 50 years through welfare, food stamps, medicaid and other entitlements…..like keeping a crack addict dependent on you by keeping them addicted…” and Joey Farah of World Net Daily argued in August that, “leftists have not done anything positive for blacks since some of them supported the Voting Rights Act of 1964…”
Obviously, it wouldn’t even be worth our time investigating what Republicans have done for blacks or for any other minority group in the United States in the past forty years. Republicans point out correctly that in the early days of the Civil Rights movements Democrats were often opposed to the interests of the black population but they can’t seem to get past the idea that it is no longer 1963 and that positions have now reversed. As the Republican Party has moved further right it has become the party of conservative white people.
They can’t come to grips with their own racist views. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. Limbaugh infamous for repeatedly playing the racist ditty “Barack the Magic Negro” said in August 2010: “The Democrats are trying to keep black people out of politically powerful positions, it ain’t us.”Beck famous for saying Obama “has a deep-seated hatred of white people” said in January 2008: “Democrats, you just hate black people. It’s the only choice I can come up with. It’s the only possible reason: You are just racist. You hate black people. It’s amazing. It’s amazing.”
RWW says that,
Bishop Jackson and Rick Scarborough joined Tom DeLay and Phyllis Schlafly in releasing a voter’s guide that shows the average score of Republican and Democratic members of Congress from the American Conservative Union. Scarborough called himself “a Christocrat” but that “as a matter of principle I simply vote Republican 90 percent of the time.” Schlafly added that “you’re better off to vote the straight Republican ticket than the Democrat ticket.”
Of course, Tom DeLay and Phyllis Schlafly hardly make for a compelling argument, no more than do figures from “the American Conservative Union” which bills itself as “America’s conservative voice.” Yeah, we can hardly expect the ACU to find in favor of the Democrats.
The narrative they have constructed sounds very Old Testament: According to RWW Bishop Jackson “maintained that the Democratic Party represents ‘godlessness,’ and stands for ‘fiscal irresponsibility, moral relativism or amorality, anti-Christian bigotry, and a foreign policy of surrender and appeasement.’”
Gosh, I’m surprised Washington D.C. hasn’t turned into a pile of salt.
The Tea Party, on the other hand, received praise from Scarborough and his guests, which comes as no surprise to anyone keeping up with developments. Morning Joe was full of self-approbation: He says he receives “rousing ovations at Tea Parties when I talk about the God-factor.”
Good for you Joe. Tells anyone who knows nothing else about you everything they need to know.
But what about this modern form of slavery? Why is it Republicans insist that Democrats want to enslave blacks? Where is the evidence?
It’s not Democrats, after all, who marginalize and disenfranchise black or other minority voters. It’s not Democrats who are accusing America’s first black president of being a watermelon-picking white-hating racist and a Muslim. It’s not Democrats who go to Tea Party rallies and wave Confederate flags all over the place. That would be the Republicans.
Democrats like the American flag just fine. And Democrats don’t send the NRA around to whisper into the ears of the southern hill folk that Clinton or Obama is going to “take all their guns away and give them to the niggers.”* That, again, would be the Republicans.
So how is it exactly that the Democrats are trying to enslave the blacks? Blacks have been voting Democrat since Truman back 1948 (77% of the black vote). They gave LBJ a whopping 94 percent of their votes and that record held until Obama garnered his 96 percent. According to FactCheck.org, “Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. No Republican presidential candidate has gotten more than 15 percent of the black vote since.”
The numbers speak for themselves. And when those blacks gave Barack Obama their vote, they were accused – by the Republicans – of being racists by voting for Obama simply because he was a black man. Are whites racist when they vote for a white candidate?
It would seem in Republican eyes that the blacks just can’t win. Of course, neither can white folks, Hispanics, or anyone else – or the country itself for that matter. None of us are going to catch an even break from these theocrats. And make no mistake, the Tea Party and the Religious Right are bumping uglies as we speak, eager to produce a monstrosity that will destroy America.
Bishop Jackson (who is black) argues on his website that “We are unifying Americans around the Judeo-Christian principles which can save our country, because they are the principles which built it. Those principles are being lost. It is time to take a STAND, before it is too late!”
Of course, as we have noted many times over, Judeo-Christian principles did not build our country at all, but the principles of the liberal European Enlightenment. Jackson claims that “The vision of being “One Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” is nearly lost.” What Jackson does NOT tell you is that this phrase from the Pledge of Allegiance was not originally part of the pledge of allegiance but was added only in 1954. The vision Jackson endorses is not the vision of those who founded the United States of America.
Bishop Jackson says he is against “our country’s slide into secular atheism,” and “anti-Semitism” (apparently less than a blanket approval for every action the state of Israel undertakes makes you an anti-Semite for Jackson) “and anti-Christian bigotry.” Of course, he is for instituting a theocracy that stands against everything the Founders intended and envisioned, and for anti-gay bigotry. I’m not sure what Jackson has to be proud of here.
Ideology should never get in the way of facts, and for Jackson and his PAC and for the Republican Party, it has. The facts must fit the system; they cannot be allowed to contradict the purity of Republican ideology. Fortunately for America, most voters are not Christian extremists like Bishop Jackson or James Dobson. And fortunately, black voters know exactly who is trying to enslave them.
Notes:
*This story was related to me by a conservative Christian friend who does volunteer work in the Appalachians for his church. This is what he was told by these people both relating to the candidacy of Clinton and Obama. Obviously, Clinton did not take anyone’s guns away and neither did Obama. Guns laws, in fact, continue to be relaxed, not strengthened.
- Resistance Leader Maxine Waters Receives Standing Ovation at MTV Movie Awards - Mon, May 8th, 2017
- A Desperate Trump Lashes Out As Sally Yates Prepares to Testify - Mon, May 8th, 2017
- Idaho Republican Claims ‘Nobody Dies Because They Don’t Have Access to Health Care’ - Mon, May 8th, 2017
